Something Wicked This Way Comes (12 page)

He slept for exactly one hour.

    And then, as if remembering something he had only half seen, he woke, sat up, and peered out at Jim's rooftop.

    'The lightning-rod!' he yelled. 'It's gone!'

    Which indeed it was.

    Stolen? No. Jim take it down? Yes! Why? For the shucks of it. Smiling, he had climbed to scuttle the iron, dare any storm to strike his house! Afraid? No. Fear was a new electric-power suit Jim must try for size.

    Jim! Will wanted to smash his confounded window. Go nail the rod back! Before morn, Jim, the blasted carnival'll send someone to find where we live, don't know how they'll come or what they'll look like, but, Lord, your roof's so empty! the clouds are moving fast, that storm's rushing at us and. . .

    Will stopped.

    What sort of noise does a balloon make, adrift?

    None.

    No, not quite. It noises itself, it soughs, like the wind billowing your curtains all white as breaths of foam. Or it makes a sound like the stars turning over in your sleep. Or it announces itself like moonrise and moonset. That last is best: like the moon sailing the universal deeps, so rides a balloon.

    How do you hear it, how are you warned? The ear, does it hear? No. But the hairs on the back of your neck, and the peach-fuzz in your ears, they do, and the hair along your arms sings like grasshopper legs frictioned and trembling with strange music. So you know, you feel, you are sure, lying abed, that a balloon is submerging the ocean sky.

    Will sensed a stir in Jim's house; Jim, too, with his fine dark antennae, must have felt the waters part high over town to let a Leviathan pass.

    Both boys felt a shadow bulk the drive between their houses, both flung up their windows, both poked their heads out, both dropped their jaws in surprise at this friendly, this always exquisite timing, this delightful pantomime of intuition, of apprehension, their tandem teamwork over the years. Then silver-faced, for the moon was rising, both glanced up.

    As a balloon wafted over and vanished.

    'Holy cow, what's a balloon doing here!?' Jim asked, but wished no answer.

    For, peering, they both knew the balloon was searching the best search ever; no car-motor racket, no tires whining asphalt, no footstepped street, just the wind clearing a great amazon through the clouds for a solemn voyage of wicker basket and storm sail riding over.

    Neither Jim nor Will crashed his window or pulled his shade, they simply had to stay motionless waiting, for they heard the noise again like a murmur in someone else's dream. . . .

    The temperature dropped forty degrees.

    Because now the storm-bleached balloon whisper-purled, plummet-sank softly down, its elephant shadow cooling gemmed lawns and sundials as they flaunted their swift gaze high through that shadow.

    And what they saw was something akimbo and arustle in the down-hung wicker carriage. Was that head and shoulders? Yes, with the moon like a silver cloak thrown up behind. Mr Dark! thought Will. The Crusher! thought Jim. The Wart! thought Will. The Skeleton! The Lava Sipper! The Hanging Man! Monsieur Guillotine!

    No.

    The Dust Witch.

    The Witch who might draw skulls and bones in the dust, then sneeze it away.

    Jim looked to Will and Will to Jim; both read their lips: the Witch!

    But why a wax crone flung out in a night balloon to search? thought Will, why none of the others, with their lizard-venom, wolf-fire, snake-pit eyes? Why send a crumbled statue with blind-newt lashes sewn tight with black-widow thread?

    And then, looking up, they knew.

    For the Witch, though peculiar wax, was peculiarly alive. Blind, yes, but she thrust down rust-splotched fingers which petted, stroked the sluices of air, which cut and splayed the wind, peeled layers of space, blinded stars, which hovered and danced, then fixed and pointed as did her nose.

    And the boys knew even more.

    They knew that she was blind, but special blind. She could dip down her hands to feel the bumps of the world, touch house roofs, probe attic bins, reap dust, examine draughts that blew through halls and souls that blew through people, draughts vented from bellows to thump-whist, to pound-temples., to pulse-throat, and back to bellows again. Just as they felt that balloon sift down like an autumn rain, so she could feel their souls disinhabit, reinhabit their tremulous nostrils. Each soul, a vast warm fingerprint, felt different, she could roll it in her hand like clay; smelled different, Will could hear her snuffing his life away; tasted different, she savoured them with her raw-gummed mouth, her puff-adder tongue; sounded different, she stuffed their souls in one ear, tissued them out the other!

    Her hands played down the air, one for Will, one for Jim.

    The balloon shadow washed them with panic, rinsed them with terror.

    The Witch exhaled.

    The balloon, freed of the small sour ballast, uprose. The shadow passed.

    'Oh God!' said Jim. 'Now they know where we live!'

    Both gasped. Some monstrous baggage brushed and dragged across the shingles of Jim's house.

    'Will! She's got me!'

    'No! I think - '

    The drag, brush, rustle scurried from bottom to top of Jim's roof. Then Will saw the balloon whirl up, fly off toward the hills.

    'She's gone, there she goes! Jim, she did something to your roof. Shove the monkey pole over!'

    Jim slid the long slender clothesline pole over, Will fixed it on his sill, then swung out, hand over hand, swung until Jim pulled him through his window and they barefooted it into Jim's clothes closet and boosted and hoisted each other up inside the attic that smelled like lumber mills, old, dark, and too silent. Perched out on the high roof, shivering, Will cried: 'Jim, there it is.'

    And there it was, in the moonlight.

    It was a track like a snail paints on a sidewalk. It glistened It was silver-slick. But this was a path left by a gigantic snail that, if it existed at all, weighed a hundred pounds. The silver ribbon was a yard across. Starting down at the leaf-flued rain trough, the silver track shimmered to the rooftop, then tremored down the other side.

    'Why?' gasped Jim. 'Why?'

    'Easier than looking for house numbers or street names. She marked your roof so you can see it for miles around, night or day!'

    'Ohmigosh.' Jim bent to touch the track. A faint evil-smelling glue covered his finger. 'Will, what'll we do?'

    ' I've got a hunch,' the other whispered, 'they won't be back till morning. They can't just start a rumpus. They got some plan. Right now - there's what we do!'

    Coiled across the lawn below like a vast boa constrictor, waiting for them, was the garden hose.

    Will was gone, down, fast, and didn't knock anything over or wake anyone up. Jim, on the roof, was surprised, in no time at all, when Will came scuttling up all panting teeth, the water-fizzing hose in his fist.

    'Will, you're a genius!'

    'Sure! Quick!'

    They dragged the hose to drench the shingles, to wash the silver, flood the evil mercury paint away.

    Working, Will glanced off at the pure colour of night turning toward morn and saw the balloon trying to make decisions on the wind. Did it sense, would it come back? Would she mark the roof again, and they have to wash it off, and she mark it and they wash it, until dawn? Yes, if need be.

    If only, thought Will, I could stop the Witch for good. They don't know our names or where we live, Mr Cooger's too near dead to remember or tell. The Dwarf - if he is the lightning-rod man - is mad - and, God willing, won't recollect! And they won't dare bother Miss Foley until morning. So, grinding their teeth way out in the meadows, they've sent the Dust Witch to search. . . .

    'I'm a fool,' grieved Jim, quietly, rinsing the roof where the lightning-rod had been. 'Why didn't I leave it up?'

    'Lightning hasn't struck yet,' Will said. 'And if we jump lively, it won't. Now - over here!'

    They showered the roof.

    Below, someone put down a window.

    'Mom.' Jim laughed, bleakly. 'She thinks it's raining.'

The rain ceased.

    The roof was clean.

    They let the hose snake away to thump on the night grass a thousand miles below.

    Beyond town, the balloon still paused between unpromising midnight and promised and hoped-for sun.

    'Why's she waiting?'

    'Maybe she smells what we're up to.'

    They went back down through the attic and soon were in separate rooms and beds after many fevers and chills of talk quietly separate listening to hearts and clocks beat and now lay too quickly toward dawn.

    Whatever they do, thought Will, we must do it first. He wished the balloon might fly back, the Witch might guess they had washed her mark off and soar down to trace the roof again. Why?

    Because.

    He found himself staring at his Boy Scout archery set, the big beautiful bow and quiver of arrows arranged on the east wall of his room.

    Sorry, Dad, he thought, and sat up, smiling. This time it's me out alone. I don't want her going back to report on us for hours, maybe days.

    He grabbed the bow and quiver from the wall, hesitated, thinking, then stealthily ran the window up and leaned out. No need to holler loud and long, no. But just think real hard. They can't read thoughts, I know, that's sure, or they wouldn't send her, and she can't read thoughts, but she can feel body heat and special temperatures and special smells and excitements, and if I jump up and down and let her know just by my feeling good about having tricked her, maybe, maybe. . .

    Four o'clock in the morning, said a drowsy clock-chime, off in another land.

    Witch, he thought, come back.

    Witch, he thought louder and let his blood pound, the roof's clean, hear!? We made our own rain! You got to come back and re-mark it! Witch. . .?

    And the Witch moved.

    He felt the earth turn under the balloon.

    Okay, Witch, come on, there's just me, the no-name boy, You can't read my mind, but here's me spitting on you! and here's me yelling we tricked you, and the general idea gets through, so come on, come on! dare! double-dare you!'

    Miles away, there was a gasp of assent rising, coming near. Holy cow, he thought suddenly, I don't want her back to this house! Come on! He thrashed into his clothes.

    Clutching his weapons, he aped down the hidden ivy rungs and dogged the wet grass.

    Witch! Here! He ran leaving patterns, ran feeling crazy fine, wild as a hare who has chewed some secret, delicious, sweetly poisonous root that now gallops him berserk. Knees striking his chin, shoes crushing wet leaves, he soared over a hedge, his hands full of bristly porcupine weapons, fear and joy a tumble of mixed marbles in his mouth.

    He looked back. The balloon swung near! It inhaled, exhaled itself along from tree to tree, from cloud to cloud.

    Where am I going? he thought. Wait! The Redman house! Not lived in in years! Two blocks more.

    There was the swift shush of his feet in the leaves and the big shush of the creature in the sky, while moonlight snowed everything and stars glittered.

    He pulled up in front of the Redman house, a torch in each lung, tasting blood, crying out silently: here! this is my house!

    He felt a great river change its bed in the sky. Good! he thought.

    His hand turned the doorknob of the old house. Oh God, he thought, what if they are inside, waiting for me?

    He opened a door on darkness.

    Dust came and went in that dark, and a harpstring gesticulation of spiders. Nothing else.

    Will jumped two at a time up the crumbling stairs, around and out on the roof where he stashed his weapons behind the chimney and stood tall.

    The balloon, green as slime, printed with titan pictures of winged scorpions, ancient phoenixes, smokes, fires, clouded weathers, swung its wicker basket wheezing, down.

    Witch, he thought, here!

    The dank shadow struck him like a batwing.

    Will toppled. He flung up his hands. The shadow was almost black flesh, striking.

    He fell. He clutched the chimney.

    The shadow draped him, hushing down.

    It was cold as a sea cave in that cloud-dark.

    But suddenly the wind, of itself, veered.

    The Witch hissed in frustration. The balloon swam a washing circle up around.

    The wind! thought the boy wildy, it's on my side!

    No, don't go! he thought. Come back.

    For he feared she had smelled his plan.

    She had. She itched for his scheme. She snuffed, she gasped at it. He saw the way her nails filed and scraped the air as if running over grooved wax to seek patterns. She turned her Palms out and down as ff he were a small stove burning softly somewhere in a nether world and she came to warm her hands at him. As the basket swung in an upglided pendulum he saw her squinched blind-sewn eyes, the ears with moss in them, the pale wrinkled apricot mouth mummifying the air it drew in, trying to taste what was wrong with his act, his thought. He was too good, too rare, too fine, too available to be true! surely she knew that!

    And knowing it, she held her breath.

    Which made the balloon suspend itself, half between inhale and exhale.

    Now, tremulously, experimentally, daring to test, the Witch inhaled. The balloon, so weighted, sank. Exhaled - so freed of vapour - the craft ascended!

    Now, now, the waiting, the holding of dank sour breath in the wry tissues of her childlike body.

    Will waggled his fingers, thumb to nose.

    She sucked air. The weight of this one breath skimmed the balloon down.

    Closer! he thought.

    But, careful, she circled her craft, scenting the sharp adrenalin wafted from his pores. He wheeled, following as the balloon spun, and him reeling. You!. he thought, you want me sick! Spin me, will you? Make me dizzy?

    There was one last thing to try.

    He stood very still with his back to the balloon.

    Witch, he thought, you can't resist.

    He felt the sound of the green slime cloud, the kept bag of sour air, the squeal and stir of mouse-wicker on wicker as the shadow cooled his legs, his spine, his neck.

    Close!

    The Witch took air, weight, night burden, star-and-cold-wind ballast.

    Closer!

    Elephant shadow stroked his ears.

    He nudged his weapons.

    The shadow engulfed him.

    A spider flicked his hair - her hand?

    Choking a scream, he spun.

    The Witch, leaned out, was a mere foot away.

    He bent. He snatched.

    The Witch tried to scream out breath when she smelled, felt, knew what he held tight.

    But, in reaction, horrified, she seized a breath, sucked weight, burdened the balloon. It dragged the roof.

    Will pulled the bowstring back, freighted with single destruction.

    The bow broke in two pieces. He stared at the unshot arrow in his hands.

    The Witch let out her breath in one great sigh of relief and triumph.

    The balloon swung up. It struck him with its dry rattle-chuckling heavy-laden basket.

    The Witch shouted again with insane happiness.

    Clutched to the basket rim, Will with one free hand drew back and with all his strength threw the arrowhead flint up at the balloon flesh.

    The Witch gagged. She tore at his face.

    Then the arrow, a long hour it seemed in flight, razored a small vent in the balloon. Rapidly the shaft sank as if cutting a vast green cheese. The surface slit itself further in a wide ripping smile across the entire surface of the gigantic pear, as the blind Witch gabbled, moaned, blistered her lips, shrieked in protest, and Will hung fast, hands gripped to wicker, kicking legs, as the balloon wailed whiffled, guzzled, mourned its own swift gaseous death, as dungeon air raved out, as dragon breath gushed forth and the bag, thus driven, retreated up.

    Will let go. Space whistled about him. He turned, hit shingles, fell skidding down the inclined ancient roof, over down to rim, to rainspout where, feet first, he spilled into further emptiness, yelling, clawed at the rain gutter, held, felt it groan, give way, as he swept the sky to see the balloon whistling, wrinkling, flying up like a wounded beast to evacuate its terrified exhalations in the clouds; a gunshot mammoth, not wanting to expire, yet in terrible flux coughing out its stinking winds.

    All this in a flash. Then Will flailed into space, with no time to be glad for a tree beneath when it netted him, cut him, but broke his fall with mattress twig, branch and limb. Like a kite he was held face up to the moon where, at his exhausted leisure, he might hear the last Witch lamentations for a wake in progress as the balloon spiralled her away from house, street, town with inhuman mourns.

    The balloon smile, the balloon rip was all-encompassing now as it wandered in deliriums to die in the meadows from which it had come, sinking down now beyond all the sleeping, ignorant and unknowing houses.

    For a long while Will could not move. Buoyed in the tree branches, afraid he might slip through and kill himself on the black earth below, he waited for the sledgehammer to subside in his head.

    The blows of his heart might jar him loose, crash him down but he was glad to hear them, know himself alive.

    But then at last, gone calm, he gathered his limbs, most carefully searched for a prayer, and climbed himself down through the tree.